florida state university college of music performance practice

What are the attributes and differences in expressiveness in the Baroque period
versus the Romantic period? What are the differences between performances in the
beginning to the mid twentieth century from the later half of the twentieth century to
current day? All of these questions are important to explore because as time progresses
fewer musicians will have lived and be able to recollect the change that performance
practice has undergone throughout the twentieth century. Generations have passed to
where music schools are now graduating students that were not born prior to1980. Thus,
their sonic world has to various degrees, always been framed within the context and
influenced by repercussions of the historically informed movement.
The problem of terms like “romantic” is the inconsistency in which it is often
used and the inherent paradoxes present when describing such a state. Most likely, in
today‟s milieu, one approaches the word negatively because it conjures up thoughts of
conductors who performed early music, to some most egregiously of Bach, in a
symphonic-operatic manner. 360 However, Golomb (2004) begins with the Oxford English
Dictionary, which defines the word romantic as “fantastic, imaginative, visionary, and
aesthetically more concerned with feeling and emotion than with form and order.” 361
While the first three words in this list are rather ambiguous and not necessarily helpful,
the last clause, “aesthetically more concerned with feeling and emotion than with form
and order,” is certainly an attribute of romantic inclination. Dorottya Fabian (2003) lists
another attribute of romanticism as a “continuous legato and never-ending phrases or
melodic lines, covers up the frequent cadence points so typical of baroque music by
undulating dynamics, elongated tempo rubato, and a climatic emphasis on suspensions
and dissonances.” 362 Haynes affirms this by saying, “The Romantic long-line or „climax
phrase‟ is traditionally the length of a singer‟s or wind player‟s breath.” 363 This
“overarching phrase” is usually presented with a dynamic shape that organically rises and
falls through employing a natural crescendo and decrescendo in a sostenuto manner. 364
Additionally, author Kevin Bazzana attributes romantic aesthetics for performance
realization as placing primacy to the individual performer before the composer or
360 Golomb, “Expression and Meaning in Bach‟s Performance and Reception,” 37.
361 Golomb, “Expression and Meaning in Bach‟s Performance and Reception, 39.
362 Fabian, Bach Performance Practice, 1945-1975, 131.
363 Bruce Haynes, The End of Early Music. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 184.
364 Ibid.
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